


will the world remember me when i'm gone?

by kiorran



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alliums, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Canonical Character Death, Dead TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Flowers, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Good Jschlatt (Video Blogging RPF), Good Wilbur Soot, Hurt/Comfort, I forgot how to tag, Kinda?, Kristen is Death, Mumza - Freeform, Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Older Siblings Wilber Soot and Technoblade, TommyInnit Angst (Video Blogging RPF)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29817303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiorran/pseuds/kiorran
Summary: Wilbur knew he wasn't missed back on the SMP, and he was at peace with that. Wilbur is at peace in the afterlife.Sure, Schlatt's stuck here with him, but it's peaceful and relatively quiet. They even get visited from Death herself every once in a while.What Wilbur didn't expect when he died was the pain of someone new coming to the afterlife, the pain of having to witness his younger brother die at the hands of his abuser, and the pain of having to answer the question does anyone even miss Tommy?
Relationships: Jschlatt & Wilbur Soot, TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF) & Everyone, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 14
Kudos: 278
Collections: Dream SMP Fics (Mainly Tommyinnit (Yeah I'm That Bitch))





	will the world remember me when i'm gone?

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work for the Dream SMP so please be nice I guess? I'm not expecting this to go anywhere, but I was watching Ranboo's stream on 2/3 and hoooo boy did it put me in my feels. 
> 
> I speedran this and should be sleeping because I have SAT's tomorrow but oh well the block men are making me cry again so...
> 
> I also wanted to get this out before the Tales of the SMP Haunted Mansion episode so here
> 
> This is not edited, beta-read, or even read twice so please just take it and go 
> 
> also if you're here from my other fic. . . you didn't see this

Schlatt had changed. 

No, Schlatt was not a good man and most likely would never be. However, he had changed in death. 

It was tense when Wilbur and Schlatt had died on the same day, hours apart. Two different sides of the same war - escaping the anger, slaughter, and war of the real world, only to be stuck together in the World of the Dead. 

There was shouting at first, but when words were wasted there was nothing but silence. 

The World of the Dead was white. 

There was no day or night, just everlasting brightness. 

There was, however, a tree. A birch tree with pink petals that continuously fell and drifted lazily around them, never seeming to run out. 

There was the brightness, the tree, and grass. Grass that Wilbur and Schlatt sat together on, feet apart, watching and waiting for nothing and everything at the same time. 

The tree was awfully reminiscent of the L’manburg tree, Wilbur thought one . . . time. There were no days, or hours, or minutes to keep track of. Time floated by, and Wilbur couldn’t find it in himself to even care. As Wilbur watched the tree silently Shed its petals, he was reminded of when he actually has something to fight for. 

The tree was not the L’manburg tree, it didn’t look anything like it, but Wilbur couldn’t help the comparison. The two trees were the only ones that ever meant something to him. 

Amidst the brightness, the tree, and the grass sat two villains who created their own misery. 

It was silent in the World of the Dead. There was no sound unless Wilbur and Schlatt spoke, so the silence was overwhelmingly suffocating. 

But eventually, in the expanse of nothing, something had to break.

“How do you think they’ll remember us?”

Schlatt scoffed. 

“Well, I know that I won’t be remembered with the fondest of memories.”

Wilbur picked at the grass around him.

“Yeah, but. . . you were the president. You said it yourself, you changed the nation. Nothing can go back to the way it was before you. L’manburg is forever changed.”

“Manburg.”

Wilbur turned to glare at him, but there was nothing to see from the other man. There was no malice behind Schlatt and his words. Not anymore. The fight had been drained from him long ago. His death proved that, his own heart gave up. 

Schlatt had changed. 

Maybe it was for the better. Maybe it wasn’t. 

It didn’t matter anymore. No one else would even know.

So they talked. And talked. And talked. 

There was nothing to do but talk.

And time lead them to a mutual understanding. Time alone had changed them, maybe even healed them. But there was still no one to see it, no one ever would. 

Eventually, there came a woman. Dressed in black and floating an inch above their grass, She smiled down at them. Her presence brought a warmth they hadn’t felt since they arrived at the World of the Dead. 

When it became clear She wasn’t going to speak, Wilbur and Schlatt continued their own conversation. She sat down beside them, cross-legged, and listened to their conversation silently. 

She continued to come every so often, just dropping by, never speaking. She stayed for a conversation, maybe two, and left without a trace. One moment She would be there, Her comforting smile a continued constant, and with a blink and a glance, She would be gone once again. 

So Wilbur and Schlatt sat there and after a while, She joined them yet again. However, after listening for a time, something changed. With a wave of Her hand, She summoned a drink. 

A champagne glass of a shimmering, peach-colored liquid. 

Schlatt paused. “We can summon things here?”

She only raised Her eyebrow. 

With a smirk, Schlatt copied Her movement, twisting his wrist with a flourish and suddenly he was holding a beer can. An empty beer can. 

“What the fuck is this? Why can’t I drink here?”

He was answered with another smile, and a pause. 

“Only nectar can be consumed after your passage.”

The first words She spoke were cryptic, and somehow made perfect sense to Wilbur.

So he tried too, wishing for a glass of whatever this nectar was. A similar liquid appeared in his hand, but his was held by a tankard. 

How fitting, he thought. It looked like the same ones he would drink from with his friends as they sat around a small tavern table, planning their revolution. 

With only some hesitance, he brought the large mug to his lips and sipped this supposed nectar. It tasted like memories. Sweet, warm memories. It tasted of citrus and honey and roses and smoke all at the same time. 

“It’s good,” he said, almost surprised. 

“It’s supposed to be,” She smiled. 

As he watched the lady, he saw Schlatt out of the corner of his eye glare at his empty beer can before watching it fill with the same peach-colored liquid. 

“Why now?”

“Why not now?”

A beat.

“Why have you started talking to us now, after all this time?” Wilbur spoke.

She smiled and paused, almost as if She was thinking, but Wilbur had the gut feeling She already knew her own answer.

“Sometimes there needs to be an added beauty to a nonsensical expanse.”

Schlatt snorted into his beer can as he drank. “You’re the vaguest, most annoying person I have ever met.”

“Who says I’m a person?”

Schlatt rolled his eyes and took another swig of the nectar, but he didn’t speak this time, only whipped his chin with the sleeve of his shirt. 

“Who are you then?” Wilbur asked.

“No one of major importance to the grand scheme of life.”

Schlatt let out a harsh laugh and raised his can to her. “Join the club, lady.”

“I suppose we do have that in common.” She smiled and tipped Her own glass. 

With a small pause, Wilbur raised his own tankard to tap the other two. 

“To the nonexistent, inconsequential acquaintances in this plane of existence.” 

They each somehow smiled as they took a sip of their respected drinks. 

But after a moment, She said, “I’d like to think we’re more than acquaintances, Wilbur.”

“Maybe.” He hummed. “But he’s certainly not my friend.”

“No?” She said. “And why not?”

It was Wilbur’s turn to scoff. “We’ve fought a war against each other. I doubt friendship can stem from that.”

“But yet here you two are. Alone. Except for each other.” And when Wilbur blinked She was gone. 

He turned to Schlatt. His acquaintance. Not his friend. 

“You are not my friend.”

Schlatt only huffed and rolled his eyes. “Obviously, idiot. I’d rather be anywhere but here.”

“Good. We’re on the same page.”

Schlatt didn’t respond. He copied the movements She did before with Her hand, but this time he was holding a stack of playing cards. 

“Wanna play some poker?” 

* * *

Like all good things, their peace was interrupted. 

Things were going . . . smoothly. As smoothly as they could for people stuck for eternity together. With the knowledge of being able to Summon - as they took to calling it - things became if not better, at least less bland. 

They had a campfire now, and two laid-out sleeping bags. It was too hard to Summon beds, and it’s not like they truly even needed them. There was no sleeping anymore. They could rest, She told them they could also try meditation. Only Wilbur tried that once, and he had to watch - silent and unobserved - as Dream dragged his younger brother away from his country. The country Wilbur built _for_ Tommy. Wilbur never tried meditation again. 

So things were less bland now. They had infinite books to read, journals to write in, and cards to play among other things. Wilbur Summoned a guitar, too. Not the same one he played in L’manburg. That would be too hard. No, this guitar was stained redwood and the strings were solid gold. 

It was beautiful. 

Wilbur couldn’t bring himself to play it. 

It sat there, unplayed, leaning against the base of the birch tree. The Everlasting Tree, as Wilbur had taken to calling it. 

He couldn’t bring himself to Un-Summon it, either. (A thing they had learned when She came to visit and saw a pile of wasted lyric music, torn apart books, and a stash of beer cans.) It was just too hauntingly lovely to get rid of with a flick of the wrist. 

So as the resented pair sat there, this time with Schlatt reading a book on monopolies and Wilbur writing a song he would never sing, their peaceful end was interrupted. 

“Eyyy, man.”

Wilbur let out a horrible groan at the awful remembrance of who that voice belonged to. 

Mexican Dream never stayed for long, and Wilbur prayed to anyone that would listen for that blessing. He would often flicker out of their space; spending time with Wilbur and Schlatt, annoying them to wit’s end, before vanishing again. To who knows where Wilbur didn’t know. And frankly, he didn’t want to ask. 

There came a time when Wilbur changed, too. 

After some time in this dreaded expanse, he finally Shed his trenchcoat. He didn’t get rid of that either. Too many memories, good and bad, were attached to that. Mostly bad, he thought dully. He hung the coat on a branch of the Everlasting Tree, right above his untouched guitar. 

He Summoned his familiar yellow, knitted turtleneck sweater and held it in his hands. It smelled like wool, smoke, and cotton. An odd but comforting mixture of smells, he noted. As he took off the white shirt that he wore beneath his trenchcoat, it was hard to ignore the blood that still covered it. 

It wasn’t wet, that would have been horribly uncomfortable, but it wasn’t dried either. It almost looked like red dye had leaked over him. The color was too stark of a red to be natural. 

There were no mirrors, and though he could summon one, Wilbur had it in his right mind not to. He could feel the scar stretched across the landscape of his abdomen. A grand sword strike right through the gut. Done by his own blade, by his own father. 

Maybe he should feel resentful. Maybe he should feel guilty. But he didn’t Wilbur didn’t think he could even if he tried, actually. For all the space the World of the Dead had, it didn’t have space for emotions. Well maybe it did, but not bad ones, Wilbur thought. 

So Wilbur changed. He changed into his old sweater and faded jeans. He donned his beanie again, and his glasses for the first time in ages. Maybe he didn’t even need them anymore in this place, but it still felt like it helped as he read through his journals and Sheet music. 

And Wilbur changed as a person, too. He wasn’t the crazed manic who begged for his father to kill him after destroying the only home he ever knew. He didn’t like thinking of himself that often. He thought it was almost pitiful, selfish even. But he knew he had changed. There was no denying how he was in the wrong. No denying how much pain he put through his old friends, his older brother, and Tommy.

But there was also no one to apologize to. No one to beg for forgiveness. No one to say they either hated him, didn’t care, or accepted it. 

And maybe that was worse. 

And maybe that’s what he deserved. 

* * *

It scared him when he felt it. 

It was horrifying to feel a space growing in the World of the Dead. 

And it was even more horrifying because he knew who it was for. 

So he was glad when he felt it grow smaller, eventually disappearing. 

She stood by Wilbur’s side as he stood, a welcoming warm presence that he needed just about now. 

“Do you want to talk to him?”

It was a simple question. Why couldn’t he think straight? Why couldn’t he answer?

He just nodded. 

It was a new place. This place had no brightness, only darkness. No ground. Wilbur floated until he could hear voices. Only when he heard his little brother speak could he find his own words within himself. 

And he only spoke the truth. He was impressed. He was impressed that his own brash, spiteful little brother managed to get away, on top and unscathed, from the most powerful person on the server.

When Tommy asked how he was here, he didn’t want to tell them the truth. He couldn’t. Even though he believed that She wouldn’t mind, he couldn’t bring himself to. He told Tommy not to worry about it. 

It pained him to see Tommy so hesitant, so worried.

He tried to cheer him up, but somehow he could feel the disconnect between himself and Tommy and Tubbo. He felt it when they whispered to each other that they liked his ghost counterpart more. 

Maybe it hurt. Maybe it didn’t. Wilbur didn’t know.

Like he realized before, they didn’t know he changed. He himself didn’t even know _how_ he changed. 

Tommy said he was unsettled. Maybe Wilbur was too. 

He tried joking with Tommy. It didn’t work. 

Tommy and Tubbo wanted to bring him back. 

Wilbur didn’t know what he wanted. 

Did he?

Was he confused? He didn’t know.

So he told them no. The World of the Dead was peaceful, and maybe it wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst. 

They asked about Schlatt. If they didn’t believe Wilbur changed, how could think he did? So he lied. Maybe it was a lie. Maybe it wasn’t. Wilbur didn’t know. And it was _so frustrating_ not to know his own damn feelings. 

What only felt right was to fall into banter with his brother. _That_ was what he was comfortable with. _That_ was what he knew. 

And he was proud of Tommy. Maybe he would see him soon.

Wilbur was full of maybe’s. 

* * *

It was quiet when he returned. She only nodded to him before vanishing. It was nice to be it the brightness again, however. The darkness of between worlds was unsettling. 

Schlatt didn’t ask about Tommy right away, but he did eventually. 

So they talked. 

Over card games, over drinking nectar, over sitting in the grass. They talked like they had since the time they got here. Maybe they were friends. It was another thing Wilbur didn’t know. 

“Tommy’s a smart kid,” Schlatt said later as they watched petals from the tree fall. “I’m sure with Dream in prison he’ll be fine. And maybe you will get to see him again soon. If they have the resurrection book they’re most definitely going to use it on you.”

“They’ll probably have to bring you down too.”

“Nah, they don’t want me down there.”

“They may not have a choice. Depending on how the book works.”

Schlatt only shrugged. 

* * *

Wilbur felt the pain again. An aching in his chest he couldn’t describe. It felt like the other time, but this one felt more real. More sudden. 

“Holy shit! What the fuck is going on?!” 

This time was worse. Way worse. 

“You feel it too?”

There was a space growing in the World of the Dead. A space that shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t supposed to belong there. 

But then it was gone.

The silence was replaced by heavy breathing. 

Laying on the grass between Schlatt and Wilbur was the one person who Wilbur swore to protect. The one person he truly failed the most. 

“Tommy?”

He blinked his eyes open, then squinted and covered them with his arm, tucking his head in the crook of his elbow as he sat up. 

After a while, he finally got a response. 

“Where am I, Wilbur?” 

There was no grand goodbye. No fireworks display. No intense build-up. 

There was no war, no violence, no large-scale fighting. 

There was no _Hello_ . There was no _How Are You_ ? There was no _Welcome_. 

Wilbur didn’t want to tell him, but he knew he had to. With a gasp and a shudder (Wilbur registers in the back of his mind that he had started crying sometime.) Wilber puts his hand to his mouth. 

“You’re dead, Tommy.”

* * *

Now Tommy knew. Now he knew of the change the World of the Dead brought to them. Tommy watched as Wilbur and Schlatt talked like old friends, and Wilbur could tell Tommy found it a bit jarring. But hopefully Tommy realized these weren’t the same people that he last talked to. 

They had changed. And so would Tommy, most likely. 

Tommy joined their conversation eventually.

“How do you think they’ll remember me?”

It was the same question Wilbur has asked Schlatt when they knew nothing of this bright expanse. When all they had was questions. Wilbur supposes that’s all that Tommy has, too, now. 

Tommy had explained his death to the pair. How Dream, the person who manipulated him for weeks on end, isolated him from his friends and his country, beat him to death with his own two fists. Wilbur was shaking with rage. He didn’t expect Schlatt to be, as well. 

Wilbur hoped, prayed, that someone back there cared. Cared enough for Tommy to remember him in the ways they hadn’t remember Wilbur or Schlatt. 

It was hard to answer Tommy’s question, so Wilbur felt. He felt the pain and sorrow, the anger and fury, the depression and sadness of the people Tommy had left behind, and somewhere Wilbur found his answer. Reaching in the distance between worlds, Wilbur could finally protect and comfort his little brother. 

“They won’t remember you like they remembered us.” Tommy winced, but Wilbur laughed. “It’s true, Toms. 

“They’ll remember you with flowers.

_Somewhere, a half-enderman boy who was only slightly older than his dead friend planted red and white flowers outside his house and along the path he walked every day._

“They’ll remember you with statues.

_Somewhere, a grieving mother would tearfully build a statue of the boy she tried so hard to protect, but had failed so miserably on._

“Big and small.

_Somewhere, a friend in passing would build the first statue, remembering the kid who had so much flair, was maybe a bit annoying, but was just trying to live his life._

_Somewhere, a fallen king who was working towards forgiveness builds his own statue, a reminder that he would never complete his goal._

“They’ll remember you with shrines and gravestones.

_Somewhere, a broken girl would walk the path of the boy she swore she hated, stopping outside the Church of Prime to look at his grave, and realize she never hated him at all._

“They’ll remember you with the things you’ve built.

_Somewhere, a friend who had drifted away would realize just how much he actually cared for someone only after they’re gone, and try to continue to carry on a legacy._

“They’ll remember you with fondness.

_Somewhere, a prison guard walks down empty halls, trying to think of where he went wrong for the little boy he cared so much about._

“With sympathy.

_Somewhere, a money-maker is in anguish over one of his oldest friends, and is comforted by his two fiancés._

“With compassion.

_Somewhere, a father hears the worst news he could, and regrets how he abandoned his youngest son, collapsing to the ground in grief he never thought he would have to feel twice._

“With honor.

_Somewhere, an angry older brother is lost in his head, storming the woods and listening to the voices asking for blood, trying to make sense of the death of the boy who couldn’t die._

“And they’ll remember their friend.”

_Somewhere, a best friend finally breaks down, realizing the pain he feels is real and won’t be going away for the rest of his life. The best friend cries and mourns. The best friend lost the one person who he thought he could never lose._

_“Why did it have to be him,” the best friend whispers to the wind as survivor’s guilt takes root in his heart._

“You really think so?”

“I know so, Tommy.” Wilbur reaches out and ruffles his brother’s blond hair. 

“Do you really think they care that much?”

“Of course. How could they not care about the great Tommyinnit!”

Tommy finally laughs.

A purple allium appears in his lap. 

“Did you summon that, Toms?”

“No . . .”

“I told you,” Wilbur smiles.

_Somewhere, a land is grieving over the loss of their youngest. The loss of the person they never thought they could lose. Whether they grieve in silence or alone, or surrounded by empathy, the land could never forget the person who made the biggest impact on all of them._

_Somewhere, Death smiles as She looks over the man who had changed, the songwriter who could never finish a song, and the boy who had so much more adventures to go on._

_But those two were hers. Her two boys._

_Finally together, and finally at peace._

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment or kudos if you liked it I suppose, maybe I'll do more of these, who knows? I kinda have an idea I want to explore of everyone on the SMP mourning Tommy to "It's Quiet Uptown" because not only do I love MCYT but I am also a huge theater nerd 
> 
> so comment if your interested ig 
> 
> <3


End file.
